Generation Kill - Evan Wright [100]
ABOUT 500 METERS AHEAD of Second Platoon’s position by the hamlet, Marines in Third Platoon spot a Zil bouncing through the field. There are about twenty young Iraqi men packed into the rear bed. They’re armed but wearing civilian clothes. The truck stops, and the Iraqis attempt to flee by the canal. Marines train their guns on them and they throw their arms up in surrender. The Iraqis insist they are farm laborers who have weapons because they are afraid of bandits. But before being stopped, they tossed bags into the field. The Marines retrieve them. Inside, they find Republican Guard military documents, and uniforms still drenched in sweat. Obviously, these guys just changed out of them. The men in Third Platoon take the Iraqis prisoner, bind their wrists with zip cuffs (sort of a heavy-duty version of the plastic bands used to tie trash bags) and load them into one of the battalion’s transport trucks.
THE BATTALION PUSHES FORWARD a few more kilometers. Cobra machine guns buzz in the distance. Mortars explode every few minutes now, but they’re still far off—hundreds of meters away, we guess.
In places the trail is almost like a tunnel bounded by reed fences and overhanging trees. It’s the most dangerous terrain to operate in, short of being inside a city. But the weird thing is, it’s awfully pretty, and everyone in the vehicle seems to be feeling it. A few days earlier, when the battalion raced into Al Gharraf under fire, there were Marines I talked to afterward who said that when they saw the dazzling blue dome of the mosque by the entrance, they felt peaceful, despite the heavy-weapons fire all around.
Basically, there are things you react to almost automatically, even in times of stress. A tree-lined trail bending past a canal is still pretty, even with hostile forces about. During one halt, Colbert’s team is completely distracted by several water buffalo bathing on the banks of the canal. Trombley gets out of the vehicle and walks over to them—even as several mortars boom nearby—and has to be ordered back by Colbert.
Second Platoon reaches another hamlet, a walled cluster of about seven homes. Colbert’s team and the others are ordered to dismount and clear this and the next several hamlets, going house-to-house. Higher-ups in the battalion have grown increasingly concerned about the mortar fire. The Cobras overhead haven’t been able to find the positions of those launching them. The hope is that by making the Marines more aggressive on the ground, they can scare up better information from the villagers.
Colbert leads his team into the hamlet by bounding toward it in stages, their rifles ready to fire. Several men emerge. Colbert shouts, “Down!” gesturing with his M-4. They drop to their stomachs in the dirt. Marines step toward them, rifles drawn, and force them to interlock their fingers behind their heads. Then about twenty women and children stream out. Espera is tasked with herding them toward the road.
A salvo of three mortars hits a couple hundred meters northwest, sending geysers of dirt and smoke up behind the village. The Marines pay them no heed. A much closer mortar, impacting maybe seventy-five meters to the west, seems to come out of nowhere. When they’re this close, you hear a sound—fffft!—just before the boom. Then, as a result of the sharp increase in air pressure, your body feels like it’s been zapped with a mild electric charge. But we’re stopped here, and there’s nothing to do about it. Mortars fall in a totally random pattern. It’s not like there’s a guy crouched somewhere in a field with a rifle, trying to pick you up in his scope. You’re not being individually targeted. You have to take comfort in the randomness of it all.
I walk up to Espera, guarding the hamlet’s women and children on the road. An old lady in black screams and shakes her fists at him. “This brings me back to my repo days,” Espera says. “Women are always the fiercest.